Becoming aware of life in this country from up close will shock the returning prodigals from Gush Katif. This is the hour to warn of "return shock," to ease the distress that even heroes might feel.

Those styling themselves "We, the heroes" from Gush Katif can expect, unfortunately, not one trauma but rather a double trauma. Tears and ink enough to fill a sea have been spilled over the first trauma of the disengagement, whereas the second has not yet been written. After the disengagement, the disengaged will experience the trauma of getting to know the reality in Israel. For decades they lived on another planet, which offered its inhabitants conditions that promote envy. Becoming aware of life in this country from up close will shock the returning prodigals. This is the hour to warn of "return shock," to ease the distress that even heroes might feel.

The disengaged, who have been disengaged from here for too long a time, will swiftly discover that many people in Israel are jobless. They are unemployed. As people from the south themselves, they will immediately discern that the unemployment rates are especially high in the south of the country. Even those who work for their living mostly earn a pittance.

This is not the way things look in the Jewish settlements in the territories, which do not look like everywhere else. Interior Minister Ophir Pines revealed recently that 60 percent of the Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip feed off the government's table. The state has nourished and supported them from its coffers, from our coffers, and there are no unemployed among them, almost. In their new places, they will find out that their country is no longer a welfare state but a profit state, where charity rather than justice prevails.

A surprise also awaits the farmers among the evacuees: They will quickly discover that slaves willing to kiss their hands for a mess of pottage do not dwell in their neighborhood any more. Fewer and fewer Palestinian serfs are allowed to enter Israel, and those who do have permits cannot always come in.

Although Chinese, Thais and Filipinos replace them, today they too are difficult to obtain and cannot always be acquired through bribery. It is not by chance that the Gaza Strip became their place of refuge in recent years, because in the Gaza Strip there is no need for permits and authorizations and there is no need to pay a head tax on foreign workers. Even the Immigration Police have recognized Gaza as a no-man's land.

Lawlessness also prevailed in the areas of planning and construction there. It is important for the evacuees to know that in Israel it is still necessary to obtain permits in order to build. Even the balcony that every house needs is not easy to build here, never mind an entire community; here it is not the usual thing to wake up in the morning and establish an outpost on the neighbor's private land, and if the neighbor calls the police, they come, sometimes, and don't always take the side of the usurpers; it has already happened that they have taken the side of the usurped.

The parents among the returnees will be told, in "The Guide for the Evacuee," that henceforth the education of their children will be a burden on them: No more free education for everyone who comes along and at every age; for day care centers, for example, they will be required to pay a huge sum that is not within the reach of most citizens of this country. Let it be known that only a tiny minority of the children in Israel are offered a long school day deserving of the name, which includes a nutrition program. The evacuees will find it hard to believe: With their own eyes they will see hungry little boys and girls. The greater land of Israel is a land whose inhabitants eat it, whereas the state of Israel is a land that eats its inhabitants. The evacuees, as equal citizens at long last, will not lick honey here for long. The government and the Knesset have already proven that there is no intention, heaven forbid, to throw them to the dogs when the disengagement happens. Everyone understands that the process of weaning from the milk and honey is long and painful. Thus the Jewish settlers' way home is cushioned with apples and padded with emoluments. The public does not look upon this unkindly: It too understands that the mountains are higher on the way back. On his program a week ago, Reno Tsror revealed a stunning figure: In Israel, 20 families a day are evicted from their homes because they have not managed to keep up their mortgage payments. Twenty families are thrown out of their homes into the street every day - minus Sabbaths and holidays, and just plain lazy days - about 100 families a week, about 5,000 a year. Who has heard about this at all, who has wept a tear for them, who has taken an interest in their traumas, who has provided psychologists and caravillas for them? Since "our heroic brothers" set out for the territories, the country has changed beyond all recognition. They became "the salt of the earth" and the country has been covered in sores. This will be a traumatic encounter for everyone, this encounter between the sores and the salt.

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How clever of Yossi Sarid to condemn both the Gush Katif settlers and mainstream Israeli society all in the same social commentary. Bitter, cynical people never understand true heroes. True heroes build and rejoice. Some people, by contrast, take pride in criticizing and destroying. In the last 57 years Israel has grown and flourished. She has developed from a third world country to one of the most sophisticated, technologically advanced nations in the world. If the brave people of Gush Kativ are forced to leave their homes, (may it never happen), and resettle in the rest of Israel, they will look around and find the good and the potential in their surroundings and build and improve those surroundings just as they did in Gush Kativ. What will you be doing then Yossi? Will you find a way to use your literary talents to build a better world? Or will you still be criticizing the products of your own poisoned imagination?

To bm:
The word "return" means to turn back to a place where one had already been (intransitive sense). How can persons who were born in Brooklyn, Odessa, Kiev, Minsk, and everywhere else and who had never set foot in the Middle East and whose ancestors had neither and whose ancestors might have been Khazar converts and who cannot point to a spot in the Middle East and say: "This is where I used to live before I was exiled and now I am back" profess to be "going back" to somewhere they had lived before. Such a claim has no more substance than a vapor. It is purely metaphorical and should be identified as such. And the metaphor is the result of some stories written over two thousand years ago purporting to record events which had happened even earlier. This is the most egregiously preposterous pretext for theft, pillage and murder of the native population. Shame on you.
As to the Arabs owning 99% of the Middle East, well, the Chinese own how much of China? Why don't you go there and take some of that land?

Mr. Sarid, it is so interesting that you would qoute the perspective of the meraglim as your own perspective (the land eats the inhabitants. If oyu think the country is so bad why don't you leave - there doesn't seem to be anything keeping you here!

Nicole wrote: "If there was no suicide bombs and terrorism then there would be no check points and no security measures for the Palestinians."
Nicole, the tragedy is that you don't recognise your viewpoint as racism. In response to terrorism and suicide bombings there should be security checks on EVERYONE who wants to get on a bus or enter a shopping mall, not just on Palestinians or people who look like they might be Palestinians. If someone commits an act of murder, then the ethnic identity of the perpetrator should have no bearing on the punishment, but in Israel it does. Only Palestinians have their houses bulldozed for murder, it never happens to Jewish murderers, not even Yigal Amir (y'mach shmo). That is the picture of Israeli racism, and it stares you in the face and you can't see it.

Thank God for Yossi Sarid and those like him who uphold the true moral values of Judaism that have been trampled undefoot by the settler debacle which has been and is nothing less than a "chilul haShem" - a desecration of the Divine Name

Jake
Very well spoken from a person who daily enjoys the fruits of genocide and theft.
What right do you have to live in NYC? What historical or moral right do you and your family have to colonize land stolen from it's rightful native owners? What historical contection do you have to it?
Have you ever personally paid reparations or even rent , or enevn apologized to an Native American?
What would your reaction be to Native Americans demanding their right to return empty publicly owned land in NY, without expelling any of the colonizers who moved in over the centuries? Would you also consider them to be monsters?
Perhaps you should examine your own self with the same scrutiny that you apply to others.

S you write--
"these wonderful people were encouraged to settle there by the various governments for so many years,NO NEED TO RUB SALT INTO THEIR WOUNDS, SUCH CRUEL WORDS".
Dear S--
How in God's name can you call these settlers "wonderful people" when they have trampled on their neighbors' rights and lived like lords and ladies while their neighbors have been caged in and are at near starvation all on account of them.
Yes, I blame their government too---they should never have created this immoral and illegal system
and I will oppose my tax money going to this corrupt government system anymore.
Still, I would like to know your definition of "wonderful people"?
I can't imagine how it could involve having a good moral conscience.
That's just my guess.
Dutch

the reason i live in switzerland is exactly what mr sarid is stating in his article...don't worry settlers, you'll soon have all of israel to colonize, people with different attitudes, including the likes of sarid and others who are too intelligent for you will come back to the ghettoes of europe, you can suck their blood then, they'll support you in building another islamic, oops, sorry, i mean halachic country...i'd rather send my kids to a secular, antisemitic school than to one of your midrashas - sorry again, yeshivas...

Yossi Sarid--
Don't you dare ask us to feel sorry for these greedy and entitled settlers.
They have lived off the fat of the land for too long and need to be booted out.
While these settlers have lived liked lords and ladies the Palestinian people have lived like
caged animals and near starvation. What a shameful lot! No moral conscience!
Thank G-d the American tax payers are waking up to tthem too.
A recent CNN poll showed an overwhelming number of respondents (94%) saying "no" to footing the bill for the pullout.
The poll refers to the $2.2 billion in aid the Israeli government is reportedly seeking to help pay for its upcoming withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Settlers being evacuated from Gaza will receive compensation packages which could reach up to
$500,000. How shocking! This injustice get sillier by the moment.
What a corrupt sysystem Israel has created with everyone's tax monies.
NO MORE Aid to Israel! And boycott all the way---until the West Bank is emptied out too!
Dutch

It's not surprising that people would not want these nutcases living in their neighborhood inside Israel. In the case of a lot of people in Israel who are against disengagement I suspect they really don't care much where these settlers go so long as it's not Israel. Who can blame them?

Sarid is wasting time ,energy and emotions.
He is talking to people who care not a bit about what Israelis within the Green Line have to endure on account of their own and their governments follies. He ought not to worry about any shock if indeed there is any shock experienced by these stone hearted returnees who have been totally oblivious to the hell endured by the Gazans so that they can live peacefully with their god.

OK OK Amitai. Perhaps I was being a bit extreme in my criticism of your attitude towards Sarid (and, I inferred, the Left). I should cut you some slack since we are probably cousins 250 generations back. That said though, one of the things that has bothered me the most on my two trips to Israel (1969 and 2004) is the degree of inter-community enmity. Sometimes it seems to me that you (Israelis) all loathe each other nearly as much as you loathe the Palestinians.
Don't kid yourself about "liberalization" (unrestrained capitalizm) giving you a better quality of life, unless you define better as a homogenized industrial/commercial sector where most everything is controlled by a small plutocracy. That is what things are coming to here.
Finally, I salute your good sense in calling for geographic representation in your political system. In many ways your system of proportional representation has been the root of Israeli political ineffectiveness - bringing with it excessive corruption, and pandering to fringe groups.

I noticed that Israel Shahaks spiteful little book (yes I have read it...) is a bestseller at the British National Party bookshop. Also it's only book written by a Jew - a "brave" one in their words. 'Objective' Pah! Good on you Tareq (the unracist Tareq of the two)

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